Materials and Design 56 (2014) 782–790

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Materials and Design

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/matdes

Experimental and numerical assessment of mechanical properties

of welded tubes for hydroforming
Ali Khalfallah ⇑
Laboratoire de Génie Mécanique, Ecole Nationale d’Ingénieurs de Monastir, Av. Ibn El-Jazzar, Monastir 5019, Tunisia
Institut Supérieur des Sciences Appliquées et Technologie de Sousse, 4003 Sousse, Tunisia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The identification of welded tubes properties considering the weld bead and Heat Affected Zone (HAZ) is
Received 7 September 2013 important for reliable and accurate finite element simulation of tubular plastic forming processes such as
Accepted 21 November 2013 tube hydroforming and rotary draw bending processes. Therefore, a simplified method is proposed to
Available online 8 December 2013
extract the weld bead and HAZ properties. Full size standard tensile specimens cut from the welded tube
and comprising the weld parallel to the load direction are extended to failure. Mechanical properties
Keywords: obtained from uniaxial tensile test are correlated with the microhardness data measured across the
Welded tube
welded specimen and by using the rule of mixtures; the constitutive model parameters of weld bead
Heat-affected zone
Rule of mixtures
and HAZ regions are identified. Accuracy of the proposed method is assessed by comparing finite element
Tensile test simulation predictions to experimental measurements obtained from two mechanical tests: the first one
Microhardness test is the uniaxial tensile test performed on specimens comprising the weld line perpendicular to the loading
Free tube hydroforming test direction and the second test is the free bulge hydroforming test achieved on seamed tubular samples.
This investigation has shown that the presented method is practical in use and sufficiently accurate to
extract the weld metal properties of seamed tubes.
Ó 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Introduction
The Welded tubes are becoming widely employed in automo-
tive and aerospace industries owing to their attractive manufactur-
ing low cost and mass production capacity [1]. For instance, over
the last few decades, tube hydroforming and rotary draw bending
processes are the chief consumers of welded thin-walled struc-
tures. Nowadays, around two thirds of the steel tube production
in the world is accounted for by welding processes [2]. Tubes with
a variety of cross sectional shapes are generally, the raw materials
used for the tube hydroforming and rotary draw bending processes
which are ones of the current active fields of development in the
lightweighting deed of automotive and aerospace industries. The
welding process has shown an influence on the size, microstruc-
ture and mechanical properties of the weld zone due to local met-
allurgical modifications that affects the tube characteristics [3–6].
The inhomogeneous effect of heating during the weld process
influences the non-uniform material properties in the heat-af-
fected zone (HAZ). Several researches have been carried out to
characterize the mechanical behavior of inhomogeneous weld joint
⇑ Address: Laboratoire de Génie Mécanique, Ecole Nationale d’Ingénieurs de
Monastir, Av. Ibn El-Jazzar, Monastir 5019, Tunisia. Tel.: +216 73 50 05 11; fax:
+216 73 50 58 66.
E-mail addresses: ali.khalfallah@gmail.com, ali.khalfallah@enim.rnu.tn
on the basis of uniaxial tensile tests [7–9]. Some tensile specimens
have been specially designed comprising only the weld bead [10],
others were a subsized tensile specimens cut from standards gauge
samples [11–13]. However, the manufacture of such miniature
samples and its testing are very subtle and complicated. On the
other hand, microhardness test has traditionally been used for
the measurement of local mechanical properties of tiny samples
or thin regions. Indeed, microhardness testing has been a wide-
spread technique for the mechanical characterization of weldment
zone. Furthermore, the indentation test is a non-destructive meth-
od which involves the same testing principle as that used in hard-
ness test and the load-unload curve obtained from indentation test
is usually used to determine the mechanical properties and local
stress–strain relationship of weld materials [14–16]. As for meth-
ods to determine the characteristics of material properties, the dig-
ital image correlation (DIC) is an efficient technique to obtain local
mechanical properties of weld bead and HAZ. This method was ini-
tially used by Reynolds and Duvall [17] and since then, it is widely
used to determine mechanical properties of laser and friction stir
welding [18–20].
Zhan et al. have established a method to determine the consti-
tutive models for welded tubes based upon a mixed tensile test,
microhardeness test and the use of rule of mixtures. Nevertheless,
their proposed method has not been experimentally verified [21].
Saunders and Wagoner have used similar method to determine

0261-3069/$ - see front matter Ó 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.matdes.2013.11.051
 A. Khalfallah / Materials and Design 56 (2014) 782–790
the weld properties of steel and aluminum of tailor welded blanks
(TWBs) [12]. They have used standard full-size specimens and
smaller sub-size samples for tensile test experiment. Similar meth-
od has been used by Abdullah et al. to obtain the mechanical prop-
erties of TWBs [11]. Likely, Lee et al. have extracted the average
properties of weld bead and HAZ of TWBs using sub-sized tensile
specimens combined with the rule of mixtures [22]. Recently Song
et al. have proposed a method to characterize the mechanical prop-
erties of laser welding beams by using the micro-Vickers hardness
test combined with the rule of mixtures [23]. Experimental valida-
tion of their proposed method by other tests was missing, but only
instrumented indentation tests using the same samples as for the
identification were conducted to verify the measured inhomoge-
neous properties of weld materials. Hence, from the above litera-
ture review, it can be concluded that up to date, many studies
have been performed on the determination of plastic behavior of
tailor welded blanks (TWB) [8,9,22,23]. Nevertheless few works
were published on the constitutive relationship of welded tubes
[6,21].
This work is a contribution among the few studies which focus
on the determination of mechanical properties of welded tubes.
The purpose of this paper is to put forth a simplified analytical
and reliable method for determining the necessary mechanical
properties to model the weld zone comprising weld bead and
HAZ region of welded tubes. This method uses correlation relation-
ships between standard tensile test properties (i.e. yield stress,
ultimate tensile strength and strain hardening exponent) and
microhardness measurements which are combined with the rule
of mixtures. The conjunction of rule of mixtures with these rela-
tionships addresses the determination of material weld properties.
The accuracy assessment of this method is based on the com-
parison of numerical predictions attained by finite element simula-
tions which use material parameters as input data and the
experimental measurements obtained from two mechanical tests.
Namely the tensile test and the free bulge hydroforming test. The
first test is performed on specimen containing the weld in its trans-
versal direction while the latter one is achieved on a seamed tube
sample. This study has shown that the presented method is practi-
cal in use and efficient to determine the weld metal properties of
welded tubes.
2. Experimental set up
2.1. Material
Studied tubes were made from low carbon steel S235JR. This
material was provided by the steel tube manufacturer company
RAF-Rades in Tunisia. These tubes were manufactured according
to the EN 103 05-03 Standards by sheet slip rolling process and
welded by high frequency induction welding. The weld zone width
is about 5 mm along the axial tube. The outside tube diameter is
50 mm and the wall thickness is 1.2 mm. Table 1 depicts the chem-
ical composition of the tube material.
2.2. Tensile test
Tensile specimens were machined from the S235JR welded
tubes in the axial direction with respect to ASTM: E8/E8M stan-
dards. In fact three sets of standard size specimens were cut from
Table 1
Chemical composition of the base material of the low carbon steel S235JR.
%C %Mn (max) %P (max) %S (max) %N (max)
0.21 1.50 0.055 0.055 0.011
783
the welded tube. The tensile specimens of the first set contain the
weld joint in the middle and along the axial direction. The second
set represents the specimens of the parent metals which were cut
in the opposite location to the first ones. Fig. 1 shows the tube
where the specimen 1 and specimen 2 were cut from. In the third
set, the tensile specimens enclose the weld bead in the center and
along the transversal direction. These samples were cut from a flat-
ten sheet obtained from the tube. It is worth to denote that the
experimental tests related to the specimen that encloses the weld
bead in the axial direction and the parent metal specimen were
used to identify the mechanical welding zone properties. Whereas
the specimen 3 is used to validate in a first approach the proposed
method. Fig. 2 shows the three specimen-types used for the tensile
tests. The experiments were performed on six specimens of each
type. They were extended to failure in a Shimadzu universal mate-
rials testing machine at a stoke rate of 5 mm/min and the displace-
ments were measured in the gauge zone by an extensometer with
a range of 50 mm. An average of the six tensile curves was calcu-
lated to represent the flow stress curve of the material in each re-
gion where the specimen was cut from. Fig. 3 represents the
experimental three curves corresponding to the different tensile
test specimens. They are plotted using engineering stress–strain
measurements. One can see the significant influence of the weld
zone on the mechanical properties of the parent material. It can
be observed that the strength of the specimens with weld zone
parallel to loading direction is higher that of the parent metal spec-
imen. The weld also decreases the elongation of the tested material
even when it is perpendicular to the loading direction. This influ-
ence of the weld on mechanical properties depends on the orienta-
tion of weld zone relative to the tensile direction.
2.3. Microhardness test
The microhardness measuring method using standards ASTM:
E92-82 is applied to obtain the microhardness profile of the tested
samples. An arc cross-section specimen is cut around the weld line
comprising the weld bead, the HAZ and the parent metal.
The samples are enrobed with resins and polished to obtain per-
fectly mirror-like surfaces. Vickers microhardness tester is used to
measure the microhardness along the transversal cross-section
direction of the specimen and along the thickness direction. The
displacements along the two directions are controlled by screw-
micrometers. Depending of the measured region the intervals of
reading microhardness along transversal direction vary from
0.25 mm to 0.15 mm. Along the thickness direction, an average of
five measurement points is obtained to represent the microhardness
for a given position in the transversal direction. The measurements
%Fe
Balance
Fig. 1. Tensile test specimens and its cut locations.
784 A. Khalfallah / Materials and Design 56 (2014) 782–790
Fig. 2. Tensile test samples extended to failure.
Fig. 3. Engineering stress–strain plots for different specimens.
were taken with indentation load equal to 300 gf and dwell time
equal to 15 s.
From the measured microhardness profile, it is possible to dis-
tinguish the weld bead, the HAZ and parent metal and the width of
each zone could be evaluated [16,21,23,27]. Furthermore, areas
and volume fraction of these zones are determined accurately. This
is very advantageous for using the rule of mixtures in the proposed
method for determining the mechanical characteristics of welded
tubes.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Tensile test characterization
Fig. 2 shows standard tensile test specimens extended to failure.
The specimen 1 and specimen 2 are used for flow stress determina-
tion of the welded material properties, while the specimen 3 is
used for the validation of the proposed method. The experimental
tensile test curves for the three specimens are plotted in the engi-
neering stress–strain axes are shown in Fig. 3. Conventional
mechanical properties of the weld and parent metal specimens
are listed in Table 2. It is shown that the yield and tensile strength
Table 2
Material’s mechanical properties according to the cutting zone of the specimen’s.
Specimen type r0,2% (MPa) rUTS (MPa)
Specimen 1 mixed material 413 436
Specimen 2 parent material 316 364
stresses of weld specimen are higher than the values for the parent
metal. Whereas the strain hardening and the uniform elongation
are lower for specimens containing the weldment than those of
the parent metal. These findings are similar to those obtained by
Ghoo et al. [3]. They reported that the strain hardening exponents
of the welded metals were lower than the values of those of the
parent metals, while the strength coefficients of the welded metals
were higher than the values of those of the parent metals. Panda
et al. [4] showed that weld specimens had higher yield strength,
ultimate tensile strength and microhardness. Hence the formabil-
ity in the weld zone is considerably reduced compared to the plas-
tic deformation of parent metal. It is obvious to denote that
modification in local properties of the metal has significant influ-
ences on the global behavior of the material. Hence, the neighbor-
hood of the weld line could be the location of prematurity fracture
in the welded tube that leads to its formability limitation. Fig. 4
shows the true stress vs. true strain relationship for the extended
specimens 1 and 2. The materials behavior was fitted to the Hollo-
mon-type equation.
r ¼ Kðep Þn ð1Þ
where K and n are the strength coefficient and the strain hardening
exponent, respectively. Table 2 presents the obtained values for
these coefficients.
One can see in Fig. 4, a little discrepancy between experimental
and fit curves at the first stage of the plastic deformation of the
specimens. However, the large plastic behavior of the materials is
well-described by the Hollomon-type. This behavior equation
was chosen for its simplicity in use and commonly applied for
curve fitting of steel plastic behavior. The accuracy of the proposed
method is not significantly affected by the gap between these two
curves, since the plastic deformations do not exceed a value of
around 5%.
3.2. Microhardness results
The results of microhardness measurement are plotted in Fig. 5.
They show the microhardness profile of the arc cross-section of the
welded specimen along the perpendicular direction to weld line.
They also present the microhardness distribution in the sample
and depict the extension of the weld zone. One can see that, the
weld region is characterized with much higher hardness about
HV = 198 than the parent metal about HV = 115. It is observed that
higher microhardness value corresponds to the weld bead and it is
located in the specimen’s center. From the weld center, the
microhardness decreases significantly in the weld bead interval
but in the HAZ it decreases much slower than in the weld bead
and it is stabilized around an average value in the parent metal.
Based on the microhardness profile plotted in Fig. 5, the width of
the weld bead is about 1 mm, and that of each HAZ is about 2 mm.
3.3. Combination of the rule of mixtures and microhardness test
The rule of mixtures is habitually used to predict various prop-
erties for composite materials and it appears considerably interest-
ing to be applied in this study owing to its simplicity and
performance. The rule of mixtures is helpful with the conjunction
of the microharness measurements and tensile test characteristics
Au50% A% Z% K (MPa) n
8.5 15 23 577 0.07
18 36 42 578 0.16
 A. Khalfallah / Materials and Design 56 (2014) 782–790
Fig. 4. Experimental true stress–true strain curves for welded and parent metal specimens with its fit curves using Hollomon-type equation.
Fig. 5. Microhardness profile of the arc cross-section specimen along the transversal direction to weld line (OX direction).
to extract the mechanical properties of the weld line which com-
prises the weld bead and the HAZ. It is assumed that the weld bead
and the HAZ plastic behaviors follow the Hollomon-type equation.
rWB ¼ K WB enWB
WB
rHAZ ¼ K HAZ enHAZ
HAZ
where the coefficients KWB, nWB, KHAZ and nHAZ represent the
strength coefficient and strain hardening exponent for the weld
bead region and HAZ, respectively. Fig. 5 shows the evolution of
microhardness of the HAZ along its width of about 2 mm. One can
see that the microhardness of the HAZ increases from HV = 120 in
its frontier with the parent metal to HV = 150 in its border with
the weld bead. Seeking for simplicity in the proposed method, the
authors assume that the HAZ is characterized by average properties
that describe the mechanical behavior across its width.
In the tensile testing of a specimen comprising the weld line
along the loading direction (e.g. specimen 1) and it contains the
weld bead, the HAZ and the parent metal, the total force applied
on the specimen is expressed as follows:
F ¼ rMIX SMIX ¼ rWB SWB þ rHAZ SHAZ þ rPM SPM
785
where SMIX, SWB, SHAZ, SPM are the cross-sectional areas of the welded
specimen or mixed material, the weld bead, the HAZ and the parent
metal, respectively.
According to Eq. (4), the average stress in the cross-section of
ð2Þ the weld specimen is expressed as:
ð3Þ rMIX ¼ rWB fWB þ rHAZ fHAZ þ rPM fPM ð5Þ
Si
fi ¼ ð6Þ
SMIX
where fi is the volume fraction of each cross-sectional area. The in-
dex ‘‘i’’ corresponds to the weld bead region, the HAZ and the parent
metal zone. These coefficients depend strongly on the cross sec-
tional area of each zone in the mixed material specimen. They have
to be obtained with the most possible accuracy. The volume fraction
coefficients fi are derived from the microhardness profile which
determines precisely the width of each zone in the cross-section
weld metal and by considering uniform thickness of the sample.
The use of the rule of mixture is generally considered with an iso-
strain assumption, thus the longitudinal plastic deformation strain
is taken constant at each point across the welded specimen and at
ð4Þ
every instant during the tensile testing.
786 A. Khalfallah / Materials and Design 56 (2014) 782–790
eMIX ¼ eWB ¼ eHAZ ¼ ePM ¼ e
Taking account of Eq. (7), the Eq. (5) is rewritten as follows:
rMIX ¼ K MIX enMIX ¼ fWB K WB enWB þ fHAZ K HAZ enHAZ þ fPM K PM enPM
The coefficients KWB, nWB, KHAZ and nHAZ are identified, whereas
the coefficients KPM and nPM are initially derived from the true
stress–true strain tensile test curve of the parent metal (e.g. spec-
imen 2), which is fitted by a Hollomon-type equation.
Eq. (8) represents a system of non linear equations to be solved.
This system of equations is resolved by an appropriate optimiza-
tion method such as the Simplex method [28,29]. The material
parameters KWB, nWB, KHAZ and nHAZ are identified by minimizing
the gap between the experimental strain hardening curve corre-
sponding to the mixed material specimen (e.g. specimen 1) and
the calculated curve. Indeed, this optimization procedure fails to
provide unique solution of the problem. Therefore, supplementary
data are required to find the adequate and sole solution corre-
sponding to the material properties in each zone of the weld metal.
Cahoon [24,25] had proposed relationships which relate con-
ventional tensile test properties such as yield stress, ultimate
strength stress and strain hardening exponent to microhardness
of metals. The correlations between tensile characteristics and
microhardness have been later experimentally verified by Pavlina
and Van Tyne [26].
These empirical relations are given as follows:
HV
r0:2 ¼
0:36
 
HV  n n
rUTS ¼
0:294 0:217
Eq. (9) relates the yield stress to the Vickers hardness and Eq.
(10) expresses the relationship between the ultimate strength
stress, the Vickers hardness and the strain hardening exponent.
Assuming that the strain hardening behavior obeys to Hollo-
mon-type equation, the ultimate strength stress can be expressed
by the following relation:
nn
rUTS ¼ K
e
where K and n are the strength coefficient and the strain hardening
exponent of the Hollomon-type equation and e represents the nat-
ural exponential.
Considering that the highest value in the microhardness profile
corresponds to the microhardness of the weld bead, the yield stress
is obtained from Eq. (9). The equality of Eq. (10) with Eq. (11) and
taking account of the Hollomon relation at the yield stress and ulti-
mate strength stress, the strength coefficient KWB and strain hard-
ening exponent nWB of the weld bead are derived.
The remaining parameters KHAZ and nHAZ which correspond to
the HAZ are then identified by minimizing the difference between
Hollomon strain hardening model (Eq. (8)) and the experimental
curve. Obtained results are listed in Table 3. It is worth to denote
that conventional tensile test properties, namely, the yield stress
and the ultimate strength stress are calculated for each zone by
the rule of mixtures. For the weld specimen, one can see that the
Table 3
Calculated mechanical properties in the different zones of the mixed material specimen.
Zone Volume fraction fi Width (mm)
Weld bead (WB) 0.08 1 1.2
HAZ 0.32 4 4.8
Parent material (PM) 0.60 7.5
Welded material (MIX) 1 12.5
ð7Þ error between calculated yield stress and experimental value is
about 6% and the error corresponding to the ultimate strength
stress is around 2.5%. However, for the parent metal the difference
ð8Þ between experimental and calculated properties are negligible. In-
deed the error between experimental yield stress and calculated
one is about 0.3% and for the ultimate strength stress is about
0.5%. This proves the robustness of the proposed method to predict
the mechanical properties of weld metals. Strain hardening models
identified using the rules of mixtures are plotted in the next sec-
tion which shows the comparison between finite element simula-
tion of tensile test predictions and the calculated responses using
the proposed approach.
3.4. Finite element simulation of tensile test along weld line
Finite element model of the tensile test along the weld line and
corresponding to the specimen 1 (i.e. the sample used in the iden-
tification of the mechanical properties of the weld zone) is built
with geometrical dimensions identical to the experimental tensile
testing sample. Geometrical model is meshed with reduced 8-node
linear solid element of type C3D8R with hourglass control and using
the software package ABAQUSÒ. 11799 nodes and 7480 elements
are used to mesh the finite element model. Two layers of solid ele-
ments are adopted across the sample thickness to capture the
through thickness variations. Three zones are distinguished in the
structure served for tensile test simulation of the weld metal. The
first zone in the specimen’s center represents the weld bead with
ð9Þ
1 mm of width and the element size used to mesh this latter is
0.5 mm  0.125 mm. On both sides of weld bead there are the
HAZ regions of 2 mm of width for each zone. The element size used
ð10Þ
to discretize these zones is 0.5 mm  0.5 mm. The remaining area
of the specimen is accounted for the parent metal which is meshed
by an element of size about 1.3 mm  0.5 mm. For each zone, the
identified properties obtained by the proposed method are used
as input data for finite element simulation. Concerning the bound-
ary conditions, the structure is fixed at one edge and extended by an
imposed displacement on the other extremity as it is shown in
Fig. 6. The results of this FE simulation are shown in Fig. 7. One
can see from this figure that responses of constitutive models ob-
ð11Þ
tained using the current method and corresponding to the weld
bead and the HAZ regions are in good agreement with the numeri-
cal predictions. Moreover, plastic behavior simulation of weld spec-
imen, which represents the overall behavior of the mixed material
(i.e. specimen 1) is in good accordance with the experimental ten-
sile test response. Fig. 8 shows the simulation results for the weld
specimen. It depicts the distribution of strains in the loading direc-
tion (see, Fig. 8a) and the distribution of von Mises stresses (Fig. 8b).
It is observed that the adopted iso-strain assumption for the rule of
mixtures is well verified by finite element simulation.
4. Validation tests
4.1. Tensile test in transversal direction of the weld
In order to assess the accuracy of the proposed method for pre-
dicting the mechanical behavior of the weld joint, tensile test using
Section area (mm2) K (MPa) n (–) r0,2% (Mpa) rUTS (MPa)
843 0.089 550 622
620 0.025 475 554
9.0 578 0.16 315 366
15 577 0.077 385 447
 A. Khalfallah / Materials and Design 56 (2014) 782–790 787

Fig. 6. Geometrical finite element model and boundary conditions.

specimen 3 is performed. In this specimen, the weld line is located

in the transversal direction and at its mid-span position as shown
in Fig. 2. The material properties obtained in this study are imple-
mented in finite element model and the simulation is run. The fi-
nite element model of the tensile specimen 3 is meshed by 1696
finite elements using 8-node linear solid element with reduced
integration of type C3D8R with hourglass control. Two layers of so-
lid elements are stacked through the specimen’s thickness to cap-
ture the strain variations. The modeled part is retained at its first
edge and an imposed displacement on the other extremity is ap-
plied. In order to obtain accurate results of the finite element anal- Fig. 8. a) iso-values of plastic strain along longitudinal direction of the specimen; b)
the von Mises equivalent stress.
ysis, particular refinement of the weld line mesh was achieved. The
weld joint is subdivided into a weld bead and HAZ region. The weld
bead of 1 mm of width is meshed with an element size of Fig. 9 shows the experimental response of the tensile test and
1.5 mm  0.25 mm. The width of each region of the HAZ is 2 mm the corresponding finite element simulation results. It is observed
and the element size used to mesh these zones is that due to the existence of the weld joint, the tensile test is inho-
1.5 mm  0.5 mm. Regarding the parent material, the element size mogeneous along the gauge length of the specimen. Hence these
in the specimen’s gauge is about 1.5 mm  1 mm. The mechanical tensile test curves are plotted in the engineering stress and strain
properties which characterize each region of the weld line are used axes, since in such cases, it is unsuitable to assume a specimen’s
as input data in the finite element simulation of this test. The uniform cross section. It can be seen from Fig. 9 that experimental
adopted spatial discretization of the finite element model was and finite element simulation results are in good agreement.
found sufficient to guarantee accurate solution of the simulation. Fig. 10 shows the finite element simulation of the tensile testing

Fig. 7. True stress–true strain curves for each zone of the weld zone is plotted (Welded bead, HAZ and parent metal) with the curves obtained by finite element simulation.
788 A. Khalfallah / Materials and Design 56 (2014) 782–790
Fig. 9. Engineering stress–strain curves of the experimental and numerical tensile
test sample including the weldment perpendicular to the loading direction.
Fig. 10. Finite element simulation of tensile test with weld joint located at the mid-
span position of specimen.
sample comprising the weld line at the mid-span position. It is
shown that inhomogeneous stresses state is obtained for the de-
formed sample. Moreover, plastic deformations are localized in
both sides of the weld line and in symmetric position to it. Thus,
fracture of deformed specimens probably occurs at these locations
as can be seen in Fig. 2 for the experimental tensile testing sample.
Similar findings have been reported by Scott et al. [30]. Since the
mechanical properties of the weld line are greater than those of
the parent metal, plastic deformation of the weld joint are irrele-
vant compared to parent metal for this tensile testing sample.
Fig. 11. Finite element simulation of free hydroformed tube comprising the weldment.
Hence the width variation at the mid-span position of the speci-
men is insignificant.
4.2. Free bulge tube hydroforming
In order to investigate the robustness of the proposed method
for identifying mechanical properties of weld line in structures
which undergoes biaxial strain paths, experimental free bulge tube
hydroforming tests were carried out on the studied seamed tubes
made of low carbon steel S235JR. A self-designed and manufac-
tured hydroforming tooling was used [31]. For a maximum bulge
height, a width of 60 mm for the free bulge region was chosen
and the die entrance radius is taken equal to 7.5 mm. An internal
pressure was applied into the tube and the tube’s ends were
locked. Two actuators were used with cylinders with conical ends
to retain the tube extremities against a chamfer machined in the
die inserts and to ensure the sealing. Further details are given in
Refs. [31,32]. The experimental measurements are the wall thick-
ness across the weld line in the circumferential direction. The
thicknesses were taken from bulged tubes using a self-designed
apparatus. Some of the samples are deformed for a given pressure,
but for others, the free bulge tube hydroforming tests are con-
ducted until the bursting of the tubular specimens. It was also ob-
served for several times that the failure occurred in the parent
material and close to the HAZ region. The performance of this
method for the determination of weld joints characteristics is
achieved by comparison of experimental measurements obtained
from free tube hydroforming test and the numerical predictions
gotten from finite element simulation using identified parameters
as input data.
The FE model used for the simulation of the free bulge tube
hydroforming test is composed of two parts: the first part is the de-
formed material which represents the tube and the second part is
the rigid body which corresponds to the dies. A general-purpose
shell element (S4R) with five integration points through the thick-
ness is employed to mesh the tube. A number of 10488 elements
corresponding to 10580 nodes are used for the discretization of
the geometrical model. Given that the weld zone is narrow com-
pared to the overall structure; refinement of the mesh in this re-
gion is accomplished. A sensitivity study on the refinement of
mesh is performed to achieve accuracy and fastness of the simula-
tion results. The current meshes are adopted to discretize the free
bulge hydroforming model. In the central bulging area, the element
size used to mesh the weld bead is 1.5 mm  0.25 mm. By the
 A. Khalfallah / Materials and Design 56 (2014) 782–790
Fig. 12. Experimental and calculated wall thickness across the weld line at the mid-
span of the hydroformed tube.
same way, for each zone of the two HAZ regions, the element size
used to discretize these zones is 1.5 mm  0.5 mm, while the ele-
ment size used to mesh the parent metal is 1.9 mm  1.5 mm.
The weld line is modeled by defining for each material region,
the corresponding mechanical properties which are obtained by
the proposed methodology.
A friction coefficient value of 0.08 is used in the finite element
simulations between the contact surfaces of the tube and the guid-
ing zone of the dies [31]. Fig. 11 depicts the finite element predic-
tion and experimental measurements of the wall thickness at the
pole. This figure shows the heterogeneous wall thickness distribu-
tion around the weld line. Furthermore, in the mid-span of the
bulged region, the wall thickness close to HAZ zone is the smallest.
Therefore, the predicted tube failure occurs in this location such as
what was experimentally observed.
Fig. 12 depicts the numerical and experimental wall thickness
across the weld line along the hoop direction. Each experimental
point was measured 3 times then the average value was consid-
ered. These plots show the confrontation between experimental
and calculated wall thicknesses for a given internal pressure of
22.24 MPa. One can see the good agreement between the two re-
sponses. Consequently, the validation results of this method which
uses simple tests to determine mechanical properties of seamed
tubes for hydroforming process, demonstrate a robustness and
accuracy in the prediction of plastic behavior for even complex
mechanical tests.
5. Conclusions
This paper proposes a simple method to accurately determine
the mechanical properties of weld bead and HAZ regions in seamed
tubes. The current approach essentially combines the rule of mix-
tures with standard tensile test properties and the microhardness
measurements. The mechanical tensile test characteristics ob-
tained from samples which contain the weld line along axial sam-
ple’s direction are correlated to microhardness data by empirical
formulas. The conjunction of rule of mixtures with these relation-
ships and considering the plastic behavior model, the mechanical
properties of the weld regions are extracted. The accuracy assess-
ment of the current method is based on the comparison of numer-
ical predictions obtained by finite element simulation and the
experimental measurements obtained from two mechanical tests.
Namely, the uniaxial extension of a tensile specimen comprising
the weld joint perpendicular to the loading direction and the free
tube hydroforming of a seamed tube. The validation results which
correspond to stress–strain curve for the tensile test and the wall
789
thickness of the tube across the weld line for the tube hydroform-
ing test were found to be in good agreement with the experimental
measurements. Subsequently, the current findings show that this
simple method achieves in good manner the identification of con-
stitutive model’s parameters of seamed tubes.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the Tunisian ministry of high
education and scientific research/DGRST (LAB-MA-05) for its finan-
cial support. The author is also grateful to Temim Zribi for his
obliging contribution in this work.
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